If Mitt Romney becomes the next president and honors his latest vow to turn the Arizona immigration law into a model for the entire country, life in America could become quite unpleasant for many of us who look like immigrants or speak English with a foreign accent.

In the Republican debate Wednesday in Arizona, where Romney and main rival Rick Santorum were competing for the state’s anti-illegal immigration vote, Romney praised Arizona’s E-Verify system to check employees’ immigration status and said, “I think we see a model here in Arizona.” He added that, if elected, he would stop current federal lawsuits against Arizona-style laws “from Day One.”

“Dios mio!” I said to myself when I heard that. Judging from what we have seen in states that have passed Arizona-style laws, that would lead to arbitrary arrests and interrogations not only of undocumented immigrants but of legal residents and U.S. citizens as well.

The 2010 Arizona law requires, among other things, that local police demand immigration papers when they have a reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country illegally. It was suspended after a federal lawsuit questioning its constitutionality and is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Supporters of the law deny it would lead to a wild goose chase of foreign-looking people and to widespread harassment of immigrants. They say the law does not allow police officers to stop people at random because it specifically requires that they demand immigration papers only when they carry out a “lawful stop, detention or arrest.”

But those are vague terms, critics say. A police officer wanting to make overtime could legally stop people to ask whether they saw something suspicious around the corner, then arrest them for not having proper immigration papers.

In addition, the Arizona law requires that local police act as immigration inspectors not only when they legally stop somebody for a crime but also when they do it for a violation of a city ordinance.

If somebody calls the police to complain that a neighbor is playing music too loud at a party next door, an officer could show up at the party and detain anybody there who can’t prove their legal status, opponents of the law say.

“The central problem is that it opens the door to widespread racial profiling based on what individuals look like or sound like,” Karen Tumlin, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, told me last week. “The ‘reasonable suspicion’ wording would force cops to make judgments based on what people look like.”

It has already happened, and not just with Latin American- or Asian-born people. In Alabama, one of several states that have passed Arizona-style laws, a German executive with Mercedes-Benz was recently arrested under the state’s new immigration law near his company’s manufacturing plant for not carrying documents proving his legal immigration status, The Associated Press reported Nov. 19.

The 46-year-old German visitor’s rental car was stopped by a police officer, and the man was arrested when he could not prove his legal immigration status, Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told the wire service. The visitor was released when an associate retrieved his passport from his hotel room.

Two weeks later, a Japanese employee from a nearby Honda plant was arrested and jailed for three days under Alabama’s immigration law after he was stopped during a checkpoint used by police to detect unlicensed drivers, even after he showed his international driver’s license, a valid passport and a U.S. work permit. There have been dozens of similar cases since Alabama’s immigration law was enacted.

My opinion: By almost any measure, Arizona-style laws are morally questionable and economically disastrous, and increasingly unnecessary as illegal immigration has dropped dramatically since the 2008 U.S. economic downturn.

If Romney — and, to be fair, Santorum as well — stopped federal lawsuits against these xenophobic laws and allowed them to become a model for the entire nation, America would cease to be the country it has always been.

Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald and may be contacted at